Hobson 0.8 Released

I'm happy to announce that the latest public beta of Hobson (0.8) is now available.

This release brings a lot of new capabilities that were mentioned in my previous blog post and I'll re-iterate here. Suffice to say there is a lot of good stuff here with a lot more coming!

Presence

Hobson now has the ability to define both people and locations for use in presence detection. Locations can be defined as either map (a certain radius around a latitude/longitude) or beacon (a certain distance from a BLE beacon). Hobson also has the ability to create tasks based on a person moving in or out of a location. This all provides the foundation necessary for presence detection via the in-progress Hobson mobile app.

Device Passports

Hobson now has a way to create what are known as device passports. Device passports are exchanged with user-created devices so they can connect to Hobson directly over supported protocols.

MQTT

The first device passport protocol to be implemented is MQTT and is enabled by installing the MQTT plugin. More information about Hobson's IoT capabilities can be found on Hobson's IoT page and specifics about the MQTT plugin can be found at the MQTT Plugin Wiki Page.

Alarm Systems

Hobson now allows plugins to create alarm system devices that can be armed & disarmed. This works great for alarm panels and the current Hobson sensor device works great for alarm sensors.

Data (formerly known as Statistics)

The Hobson API has been refactored to better support the concept of device data. It is now possible to create arbitrary data sets that comprise variables from multiple devices. For example, you could create a data set that tracks the outside temperature from a weather station and the inside temperature from a thermostat. The web console has also been refactored to allow graphing of these data sets.

The Hobson data plugin (still in development) will allow you to store this data locally. This also lays the groundwork for the optional Hobson cloud service that will allow you to both store and analyze the data.